Defining the X chromosome: the DNA of Women Led Startups

This post was written by Pemo Theodore and originially appeared here

For over a year I have been video interviewing venture capitalists, angel investors and women founders trying to investigate the apparent shortfall in funding for women led technology startups.  My goal has been to listen to as many people as I could from both sides of the table, in order to get a diversity of opinions on this controversial subject.  Whilst I have been doing these interviews, many people have said to me that no problem exists and that women can be as easily funded as men if they have a great idea, team, plan and advisors.  However the statistics show another story.  The percentages of women in technology, female entrepreneurs and female venture capitalists are extremely low compared to men.  But the reasons are multifold and complex and cannot be resolved quickly or easily.  With this post I hope to shed some light on the intricacies of this issue.  Everyone that I interviewed was inspiring and added a different voice and view to the puzzle.

Some of the amazing female entrepreneurs and venture capitalists I interviewed for this project were Cindy Gallop, IfWeRanTheWorld; Danae Ringelman, Indiegogo;  Julia Hu, Lark;Leila Chirayath Janah, Samasource;Lisa Stone, Blogher;Wendy Lea, Get Satisfaction, Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate; Catharine Merigold, Vista VC; Patricia Nakache, Trinity Ventures; Brad Feld, Foundry Group; Chris Dixon, Founder Collective; Dave McClure, 500 Startups; Fred Destin, Atlas Venture; Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures; Guy Kawasaki, Garage Ventures; Jason Mendelson, Foundry Group; Jeff Clavier, Softtech VC; Mark Suster, GRP Partners; Neil Rimer, Index Ventures; Randy Komisar, Kleiner Perkins and Tim Draper, Draper Fisher Jurvetson. You can see the full list here.

I have teamed up wtih Startup Genome to help get a critical mass of women to participate in the Startup Genome Project in order to add the dimension of quantitative data to the discovery of the DNA of women led startups. The Startup Genome has already learned that “approximately 70% of the startups in their dataset scaled prematurely. I am very interested to see if the same pattern holds for women, because through the interviews I have conducted the consensus has been that women tend to be perfectionistic, moving slower but more surely than their male counterparts. Is it possible that the more careful nature of women may cause them to fail less?  We shall see what the data reveals, but the Startup Genome Team reminds me that while women may be more likely to avoid premature scaling, they may fall prey to "dysfunctional scaling", a problem that occurs when entrepreneurs fail to step on the gas pedal once the product has been validated.

A lot of feminine strengths may not match up to historical and portraits of successful entrepreneurs.  This could mean that some women may need to learn skills and shore up certain qualities to be a good fit.  Many spoke about the need for great female entrepreneurial role models and mentoring of women both by men and women, which includes peer mentoring as well.  Women entrepreneurs may also need to learn about the venture and angel industry and to identify the best investors to whom they should pitch their startup.  There are now many women friendly investors, many of whom I interviewed.  It is helpful for women entrepreneurs to grow their networks and to get to know investors before stepping up to the plate to raise investment capital.  This can help a female entrepreneur’s general confidence and help her identify the best avenues for her to target.  Here are some interesting stats on women who raise venture from a 2007 survey by British Researcher Library House:

women ask for exactly what they need in capital and end up with half what they require from investors
men tend to ask for twice as much venture in hopes of getting half from investors
female CEOs delivered higher revenues using less capital than those by men
the average venture backed company run by a woman has annual revenues 12% higher than those by men using on average one third less capital

How You Can Help
I am encouraging all women led startups to use the Startup Genome Compass so that we can have more hard data about the gender differences in the world of technology entrepreneurship. If you know any women entrepreneurs please share this article with them and point them to the Startup Genome Compass.

Entrepreneurs can sign up here: https://www.startupcompass.co/
You can read the full post at EZebis or Startup Genome Compass Blog

This post was written by Pemo Theodore and originially appeared here

Pemo Theodore is a Startup Coach. She has been an Australian origin entrepreneur in online business for over 6 years since developing her other site AstraMatch (which I no longer own). Pemo has been involved in small business for 33 years in Australia, Canada, Ireland & London.